


the company she chooses

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Millennium Falcon - Freeform, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Pre-Relationship, Stargazing, The Force, okay there is no tag for porgs yet, porgs, you cannot seriously mean there is no tag for porgs yet?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 23:58:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13535304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Rose Tico has gone up in the world. Possibly because there's not much of it left to go up in.Possibly not.





	the company she chooses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weaselett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaselett/gifts).



The _Falcon_  was pretty quiet for an ancient bucket of bolts, if you discounted the shuffles and murmurs and sobs of the remnant of the Resistance, and for the sake of argument Rose did. She had always slept in close quarters, with other people's snores and wheezes and often with the hiss and rumble of working machinery, and was used to it. The porgs were a new and squawky variable, but Rose adapted quickly. Always had done.

She slept in the medical bay with Finn, because she had been pretty badly hurt on Crait and because Finn’s injuries still needed aftercare, and with Poe, because Poe and Finn were inseparable, and with Rey, because Finn and Rey were inseparable. Rose wasn't sure how the last two elements were working out, but Poe and Rey spent a lot of time bonding over the beautiful impossibility of the _Falcon's_ capabilities, and Rey was still smiling like she had the stars caught in her teeth every time she saw Poe and Finn talking strategy with General Organa and Lieutenant Connix. Rose was... just there. Just Rose.

Well, just Rose in the innards of the _Falcon_  with Rey crawling in to get to the places Rose couldn't with her injuries, just Rose receiving her check-ups from an increasingly grumpy Major Kalonia alongside the General and Finn, just Rose helping Finn and the legendary R2-D2 and BB-8 upgrade the _Falcon’s_ guns, just Rose being called a ray of sunshine by Poe Dameron, and receiving a sincere smile that made her very sincerely blush. She was keeping exalted company these days.

Must be something to do with how few of them were left standing.

Rose slept through the whistles and mutters of the heroes surrounding her - Poe had nightmares he needed to be woken from sometimes, but not tonight, and Finn snored slightly but distinctly - and woke to the lightest tread on the entire ship. When she sat up, Rey was gone.

Rose went looking for her, quiet as she could in bare feet so as not to disturb the many people sleeping, and found her in a gunner's seat.

"There's no room for two down there," Rose said, sitting at the top of the ladder. "Do you want to be alone?"

Rey looked at Rose like she was startled.

"Oh," she said. "No." She looked around herself. "There is room. Come on."

"I might not be able to get down the ladder."

"I'll help you."

And that was how Rose Tico wound up sitting in a gunner's seat with the last of the Jedi (or first, depending on how you looked at it) sitting across her lap, bottom on one arm-rest, feet on the other.

Paige, Rose thought, if you could see me now, you'd...

Rose didn't know what, actually.

They were in high orbit above a planet Rose didn't know the name of, in the shadow of one of its moons. A little blue-green marble with a violet storm playing out in its upper atmosphere, purple tendrils curling over its seas and a great splotch of pale desert. Pretty. And the moon was pretty, too, if you liked the curling effect of the disused mines across its grey surface.

"The galaxy is so wide," Rey said softly. Rose looked at her, and saw that she had the sky in her eyes again. "So wide, and so wonderful, and so full of so much."

"Better save it, then," Rose said, because it was all she could think of to say, but Rey smiled.

"Yes."

There was a long silence.

"I'm sorry if I'm in the way," Rose said, with some difficulty. "You and Poe and Finn, and I'm just..."

"In the medbay?" Rey supplied, a crease between those straight brows. "Where you and Finn need to be?"

Rose winced. "That's partly my fault."

"Knocking Finn off a trajectory into a massive cannon? I don't know if that's your fault exactly. It's more -"

"No," Rose said unhappily. "When I first met Finn I tased him. And he landed on his back. I didn't know what was wrong with him, I - I spent all my time with pipes and my sister until a few days ago, and Paige never told me exactly how he got hurt. I don't know if she knew. But I knew he was injured. I still shouldn't have done it."

Rey leant her head against Rose's, which she probably wouldn’t do if she was about to execute Rose with the Force. "I know why you did it," she said. "Finn told me all about it."

"Oh," Rose said. "Oh."

"He never has a bad word to say about you," Rey said. "And I don't either."

"Oh," Rose said, and "Good."

There was a long pause.

"Does this mean I have license to bug you as well as Finn and Poe when you forget about normal human mealtimes?" fell out of Rose's mouth almost without her permission.

"I didn’t forget," Rey said, sounding amused. "I was meditating. It took me longer than I thought it would to surface."

"Yeah, well, next time I'll set the porgs on you."

Rey laughed, bright and clear, and all Rose could hear in it was sweetness. No overwhelming greatness, or destiny, or loftiness. It was like watching Poe startle and spill his caf when Kaydel snapped her fingers by his ears in the morning, or hearing Finn argue with BB-8 and yelp and swear when he got zapped. 

Weirdly human, for heroes. 

Strangely endearing.

Oh, Rose thought, trying not to go rigid in her chair. Oh, I am in deep shit.

Up above there was a very distant _ting_  which spoke of a message arriving very loudly in the cockpit, and that set every single porg on the _Millennium Falcon_  off. The world was suddenly full of squawking.

"Oh shit," Rose said. Rey said something more unrepeatable in Huttese. "I guess we better go see what that was."

"Yep," Rey said, levitating them both out of the compartment. She didn't put Rose down at the top. "Did you forget your crutches again?"

"Maybe," Rose said guiltily.

"I’ll float you."

So that was how the second thing Lando Calrissian saw, after Chewbacca coaxed all the porgs out of the cockpit to scream at something else, came to be a floating hydraulics engineer.

"Leia," Baron Calrissian said, face distorting as he leaned closer to the camera on his side in apparent curiosity, "you got a gravity problem."

"No, I don't," General Organa said. "I have an injured engineer who left her crutches in her bunk, and a half-grown padawan who's practising her skills at a godforsaken hour of the night."

"That takes me back," Baron Calrissian said nostalgically.

General Organa raised her eyebrows and tapped her nails on the console. "We need to regroup, Lando. Not gossip."

"Well then," Baron Calrissian said. "I got a few ideas for that too."

Finn was holding Poe's hand almost as if he hadn't noticed it happening, and Rey lowered Rose carefully into one of the jump seats and leaned against the cockpit wall right next to her.

"We're all ears," said General Organa.

Rose listened to heroes and legends map out a future, or at least a step forward.

About halfway through she realised she no longer felt like she didn't belong.


End file.
